


The Watford Gap

by chewsdaychillin



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (Ish) - Freeform, British Slang, Character Study, Childhood, Class Differences, Fluff, M/M, Northern slang, Tiny bit of Angst, but make it uk class accent discourse, its mostly cute friendship and cute jonmartin, north/south divide, uk politics (implied lol)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:36:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24886216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chewsdaychillin/pseuds/chewsdaychillin
Summary: a Martin and his relationship w the og three study w class/accent discourse, pet names, slang, and tenderness. jonmartin north/south power couple
Relationships: Martin Blackwood & Sasha James, Martin Blackwood & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 49
Kudos: 313





	The Watford Gap

**Author's Note:**

> i hc martin from around manchester, when i say hc i mean alex is from like greater manchester, jus next to yorkshire judging on accent and i think he went to school in stockport dont ask me how i know this

When Martin first meets Sasha he knows right away that she’s clever. And he knows she knows it. It’s more than a little intimidating, as it is with all of them, when she name drops important books and clacks around in nice M&S office wear that she somehow makes time to iron. He never has time to iron. When Tim tells him Sasha was meant to get the promotion he doesn’t doubt she’s qualified for a second. She walks like she is. Laughs with him and Tim but checks their in-trays against the cork board she’s hung up. 

The first time he misses something Martin is sure she’s going to take his folder of useless, messy rubbish and laugh about it with Jon and their three degrees. But she doesn’t. Instead she points it out to him far more kindly than he deserves and when she explains it it’s a bit pretentious but he gets it the way she says it. 

She doesn’t think he’s completely stupid. Somehow. Not only that but she thinks they have something in common since they both went to polytechnics, tells him not to worry about the boys being snobs about that kind of thing. He doesn’t have the heart to tell her even Man Met was a pipe dream. She’s always so nice about it. 

And she doesn’t make a half bad brew either. She steps in sometimes - when he’s tired enough to be slacking, selfish, at his desk instead of doing the one thing he’s good at.

‘Oi oi, delivery incoming,’ she says as she plops the biggest one, the Sports Direct one, down by his elbow. 

‘Oh, superstar,’ he smiles, touched more than she knows as he blows air across the hot surface. 

  
  


Martin calls Sasha ‘duck’ sometimes, Jon has noticed. It seemed to have slipped out by accident one morning, after his usual ‘ta’ as she’d passed him a pen. Well, Jon assumes it had been an accident given the shade of red Martin had gone whilst Tim laughed, not unkindly. Sasha had grinned as she said ‘you’re welcome’, looking very pleased with herself. Why shouldn’t she be, really. It was a nice enough thing. Jon had only ever heard grandma’s, not his own but on TV or in cafes, calling people ‘duck’. It sounds nicer and much less patronising from Martin. Tim starts referring to Sasha with the duck emoji in their group chat.

  
  


When Martin meets Tim the first thing he thinks is _wow_. But then Tim starts talking and relief overwhelms his awestruck staring. ‘I’m not just gonna give you a tour,’ Tim says, ‘I’m gonna give you the masterclass’ - _class_ not _clahss_ \- and Martin thinks _oh thank God it’s not just me._

He finds himself sticking to Tim quite closely, not just because he’s charismatic but because he’s trustworthy. He exudes ‘trustworthy’ and he _gets it_ just a bit more than Sasha would. And obviously he can’t tell Jon so - 

‘I don’t have a degree,’ he confesses to Tim late one night, ‘I lied, okay, I don’t know anything about... all that. About anything. Promise you won’t tell?’ 

Tim promises and they commiserate together over the price of London pints. 

But Tim has lived down here a while. He brings a jacket on their assistants’ pub crawl and acts like Martin is superhuman for going without. ‘Cloakroom’s only a couple of quid, you know,’ he says, going to the queue with his and Sasha’s coats. _Cloakroom_ , Martin laughs, shakes his head, _what a concept._

Tim went to Trinity College, Martin learns, which is in Dublin. They use euro there and Tim’s wearing a tie pin in his graduation photo. It all sounds very fancy. He really made it. Crossed a whole sea (Martin has only seen the sea once) to get himself an education somewhere exotic and work in publishing. He answers the phone like he knows people on the other end will respect him. If they don’t he doesn’t care, but they always seem to. 

His accent is barely there, really. 

Sometimes, as much as Martin trusts him, likes him, loves him, he feels as far from Tim as he does from the others. Tim is who he could have been, maybe, if he’d been luckier. Hadn’t had to drop out. Finished that UCAS form like his teachers had tried to get him to. Had the gall and the safety net to take out a loan and just leave. But he doesn’t like thinking that selfishly. 

Maybe in a few years time he’ll have lost more of his accent too and be braver answering the phone. 

But it’s okay, isn’t it. It’s not that deep. They’re best friends. He stops thinking about it, anyway, when Tim comes and flops on the corner of his desk. When Jon tries to send him off to Elephant and Castle on follow up and he leans down so they can drawl together ‘ _Elephant and Caaahstle’._

  
  


Sometimes Martin calls Tim ‘our kid’. As a joke, Jon knows him well enough at this point to recognise. He thinks Tim must have started it that morning. 

‘Morning, our kid,’ Tim had said, accent on, early on when it was all still fun, when they were all still a novelty to each other. He’d tried ruffling Martin’s hair and got a smack for his efforts. 

‘Been googling have you?’ Martin had asked, laughing through a death stare. ‘Tell one joker where you’re from...’ 

Google tells Jon it’s something siblings say, apparently, but it seems to catch on between them. It’s usually with Martin’s accent dialled up when they’re laughing about something together, so it’s probably a joke about him. Somehow that doesn’t bother Jon as much as it usually does. It’s nice to see them both smiling, anyway. And if it does mean something like ‘brother’, then it seems like something firmly in the _friend_ category of pet names. It’s not something he’d ever want Martin to call _him._

  
  


When Martin first meets Jon he can only think _Jesus Christ_ in utter terror. Yes, also because he’s very cute, but he is so uptight looking and so clever and his eyebrows are sharp with scowling and he is definitely going to find Martin out when he inevitably messes up the first thing they ask him to do. 

And then he starts talking and he’s so bloody posh it sounds put on for a joke. But it’s not. People talk like that down here with their elbow patches and their brogues. He doesn’t seem interested enough in small talk to ask Martin where he’s from and Martin is more than happy to keep his mouth shut. 

When he hands over his first bout of research, feeling like he’s turning in an exam, he spots the certificate framed on the wall. Bloody Oxford. Of course he is. His intelligence and cute glasses aren’t half attractive but God - _Oxford?_ He pictures Jon drinking sherry in some ridiculous bow tie and cap in a great cathedral and... to be honest it might just be enough to get over him. The image is so nose-wrinklingly ridiculous. Aloof is Martin’s type, yes, fine. Not private school, though.

But then Jon softens a bit and his voice softens too when he stops trying to fool them all he’s not scared. He’s still BBC as anything, but they laugh about Sasha’s new _Kensington_ boyfriend together. 

When Jon insists on paying for both their lunches out he doesn’t do it like it’s nothing, like he’s showing off. He hands his tenner over like it means something to him but the lunch means more. They both dig for change and their fingers touch over the tip jar. The fact Jon puts a two-pound coin in without dithering about it is maybe a little bit attractive. There’s a sliver of a red card visible in his wallet, with his name and the top of a rose just peeking out. Catching it, recognising it makes something bubble happy as champagne in Martin’s chest. Can’t be private school, then. At least not private school tory. So that’s a relief. 

Later Martin catches himself - predictably he supposes, it was only a matter of time - finding it quite endearing, thinking it’s sort of adorable, as he watches Jon struggle with the lid of his Pret granola. Goes from ‘posh idiot’ to a fond ‘ _my_ posh idiot.’ 

  
  


By the time he manages to get it all out, Jon has wondered for a long while if he’ll ever be called anything. But it takes a moment to get to it.

The first confessions had tumbled out of his salt-dried mouth as soon as they were out of there, not really explicit. Garbled rubbish if he’s honest, all stirred in with _‘are you okay? Oh thank God. We’re okay, we’re out. I love you. Let’s go home. I’m just glad you’re alright.’_

He tries again, slower, once they’re safe, that first morning. It had smelled like green and altitude as he’d walked back from the shop with milk for the man he loves. The sweet old shopkeeper had called him ‘pet’ and he’d wondered if that was something Martin ever said. It wasn’t one he’d ever heard, but he’d imagined it on the trudge home and decided it would sound nice. 

Martin laughs at him when he owns up to it, fondly, gently, but very loudly. ‘Jon, I’m not Geordie!’

‘Well I don’t know!’ Jon retorts, but he’s laughing too. ‘It sounded like something you would say!’ 

‘You are so ridiculous.’

‘Well, forgive me for thinking it sounded nice-’

Martin raises an eyebrow, bumps his shoulder. ‘Do you want me to call you ‘pet’?’

‘No I’m not saying that,’ says defensively. He shakes his head and tries to explain it, going gradually from petulant to far softer than he’d meant to. ‘I just- well. I love you. So maybe it wouldn’t be so terrible. You used to call Sasha ‘duck’ and I thought that was... well, stupid but. Nice. I don’t know, I’m trying to say - I suppose that. I. Uh. I like it when- how you talk. So. Maybe I would.’

Martin drops his hand where he’s been leaning on it. It thuds lightly on the sofa and he holds his own head up, looking, eyes wide. ‘Oh, love, really?’ 

And they’d both gone a bit quiet as that’d come out. 

So from then on Jon is ‘love’. After ‘cheers’ or ‘ta’, but also after soft ‘oh’s or a gentle stroke of his hair. 

Martin insists it isn’t that cold up here. He turns the heating down again and pulls Jon into him to kiss his pout off. ‘Too used to the seaside, love,’ he teases, ‘all that Southern sun’s got you soft.’ 

Jon doesn’t remind him that, technically, they’re not paying for the heating since it’s Daisy’s cabin and he’s fairly certain the boiler’s not on anyone’s list. Doesn’t remind him that Bournemouth is hardly the sunny paradise he’s making it out to be. 

Instead he just scoffs and kisses Martin back and says ‘what’s your vendetta against the seaside? Maybe we should go sometime.’ 

Martin hums. ‘I’ve only ever been to Blackpool, once. It was pretty miserable.’ Then he smiles. ‘Would you show me yours? Not seen the South Coast.’ 

‘Yes, I’ll show you,’ Jon promises happily, voice easy like they can go tomorrow, even though they’re nearly as far from his seaside as it’s possible to be. He grins, pokes Martin’s shoulder. ‘Might be too hot for you though.’ 

‘Oh, give over.’

‘And everyone has dinner in the evening,’ Jon goes on, pushing his voice into proper Oxford territory. ‘I think you might find it all a bit exotic.’ 

‘Shut up,’ Martin grins, grabbing his collar and kissing the prim shape off of his mouth. He slips a bit of tongue in and Jon thinks _thank God for the Watford Gap for giving us this._

The jokes might be pretty cliché, maybe the politics could do with some fixing. But this is never going to get old. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank u for reading! this and [my other accent-y fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23699647) are some of my faves to read feedback on i love yall x
> 
> This was done as a prompt fill for a donation to charity. you might know already but im currently taking fic commissions as a way to supplement my income doing something i love to do. you can find my post w prices n details [here](https://babyyodablackwood.tumblr.com/tagged/fic-commissions) ! 
> 
> i also now have a kofi! if you arent interested in a commission but u like my writing then pls feel free to chuck me a couple quid [here](https://ko-fi.com/chewsdaychillin) x


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